When big-sis was a baby I got rather overwhelmed in the dinner department. The husband was working as an obituary reporter - every bit as glamorous as you imagine. Problem is that the reporting of the daily dead happens at night, so it meant I was left to fend for myself. At the end of a long day teaching I was too spent to manage much beyond a bowl of frosted mini wheats. Not exactly a well balanced meal.

Then I remembered meal rotation. This isn’t a new idea…I am sure that I am not the only one that grew up in a household where Monday night = baked chicken and carrots, Tuesday night = pasta and salad, etc. My mother hardly ever strayed from this…as a kid I hated it, but now that I have people waiting for me to produce food I totally get it.

So rotating I went, with one adjustment. I really can’t see eating the same thing every Monday. So I try to have around 2 to 3 weeks planned out. Generally my family never notices that every third Tuesday is Broccoli and Pasta. I try to set it up so we can cook ahead…like cooking extra rice one night so you can have stuffed bell peppers later in the week, or chopping two onions one night. Along with this I came up with a shopping list for each week so I could quickly check if we had the necessary ingredients. As we all know shopping with small people is almost as fun as writing obituaries.

When I stayed home with the girls I gave it up, and I am trying to reconstruct the system. I am trying to stick with seasonal vegetables, which means there will need to be summer/fall/winter variations. We’ll see if I get that far…

Why bother? Well, for us it comes down to three things:

1. I have sensitive skin, and standing in front of a class of teenagers scratching like mad is a bit disruptive to the educational process.
2. The husband has a rather sensitive sense of smell, and doesn’t like any of the laundry detergents that don’t bother my skin.
3. Cost! Rather Than spend $7 on a box of detergent, this costs us about $1.41 a batch, and lasts about the same amount of time. That is a savings of about $145 a year. That’s yarn money people.

There are a lot of recipes on-line that let you make a big gooey batch that you ladle out. That doesn’t appeal to me much, so we use a dry version. The final product will smell like whatever soap you use. You can add essential oils for scent if yo want.

If you have never used washing soda I really recommend it…works very well on greasy stains. I’ve been using it lately to pre-soak the kids socks and it work much better than bleach. Supposed to be a “Green Cleaner” if you are into such things.

Ingredients:

• 1 bar of soap, any kind will do, we use ivory, but a lot of people like Naptha.
• 1 cup Borax
• 1 cup Washing soda, NOT baking soda, it’s in the laundry aisle and it’s pretty cheap

Directions

• Grate the bar of soap
• Mix all the ingredients in a airtight container.

** Be careful with the washing soda, especially if the kids are helping. Avoid contact with the eyes, don’t swallow, etc.
To use just add 3 - 4 Tablespoons per full load of laundry, depending on how dirty it is. I find it works best if you add it while the washing machine is filling.

I used to love laundry. Before the kids-BFK. Laundry was the one chore I could start, finish and put away, and not have to think about for a whole week. And it gave me an excuse to watch bad TV. Of course most chores were more enjoyable, or at least less constant BFK. Plus there was more bad TV.

My current embroidery project
Monday = Laundry

For the first few weeks after big-sis was born laundry was a dream. In my memories I am sitting on our sofa in a sort of Doris Day haze, you know, fuzzy golden light flowing around the new mother. I remember folding all of the onesies, and washcloths and socks and thinking how perfect it all was.

For me growing with the girls has been fast trip away from perfect. Not that that things were ever prefect before, but I had all these delusions of the perfect environ the girls would be raised in. Hah!

Inevitably I woke up one day and looked around. She had a lot of tiny onesies and washcloths and socks. For the past seven years it has been a never ending stream.

me doing laundry in July-try not to stare at those shorts, eek!

Over the years our laundry habits have changed. We recently have started making our own laundry soap-I’ll post the recipe and explanation tomorrow. I try to dry as much of it outside as I can. Over the summer when I am home with the kids I can get by with doing just one load of towels in the dryer, thank you very much. Not perfect, but manageable. And definitely much better than BFK.